Confrontation
by Balanced
Summary: House thinks he needs to go back to Mayfield, Wilson insists it must be a ghost.  They set out to determine who is right, while trying to ignore feelings that are becoming more and more clear.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: Sorry. You can attribute this to a current obsession with Paranormal Activity and a determination to write something.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing, not even a digital camera.**

_**Confrontation**_

Prologue

James Wilson stepped inside the house, and shot a sideways-long glance at his best friend. The moment he had seen the place he had fallen completely in love, but he still needed House's stamp of approval.

Two long minutes passed before impatience finally got the best of him. "So, what do you think," he prompted, determinedly ignoring the sudden flutter of nerves rising in his stomach. He had been looking for suitable lodging for the two of them for weeks now and in his opinion this place was about as close to perfect as existed. Yes, the house was two-storied, but the only thing on the top floor was the bedroom Wilson had claimed for himself. (He had said that it was because he thought that being on separate floors would benefit their friendship, but the real reason was the drastic differences in closet sizes between it and the other two bedrooms on the lower level.) Also downstairs were an expansive kitchen with stainless steel appliances and a chef's oven, and an even larger living room with a wood-burning fireplace. The back patio even had a bricked-in grill for outdoor entertaining.

"It's fine," was House's response. The oncologist couldn't fight the smile spreading across his face, but he didn't care. Success! _It's fine_ was House-speak for _Good work._

"It's incredible. And the back yard is freaking huge, which is good in case we ever decide to get a dog. Which," he rushed to add off House's dark look, "we would never do. Ugh. I hate dogs."

House grinned so Wilson did too. It was nice, actually, to envision the life the new place offered. House was finally in a place where his "epic romance" (and, no, Wilson wasn't thinking that phrase with a large dose of sarcasm and biting jealousy) with Cuddy was a distant memory, and the younger man had been thinking of a change in scenery anyway. "So, we're saying yes?"

House shrugged, feigning indifference, but he could see the approval in the diagnostician's eyes. "If you want."


	2. Chapter 2

Three weeks later House glanced around what had become his bedroom with a certain amount of pride. Though he would never admit it to his friend even under pain of death, he sort of didn't hate the new place. The built-ins were a nice touch, as they added extra space for his endless amount of C.D.s.

There was a quiet shuffle of movement from the upstairs and in mind's eye he watched his friend start the process of organizing his shirts and pants by color.

Wilson was a freak.

Grinning lightly to himself he exited the room then called up the stairs, "Were we going to eat tonight, or is starvation a part of our new routines?"

Wilson stepped into view and as always House's breath hitched in his throat. He was pathetic, absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt_. What kind of man_, he wondered for the eight millionth time, _carries a ten year long adoration for someone who doesn't feel the same way?_

"Order a pizza."

"Do I look like I'm made of money?"

The oncologist raised his outrageously puffy eyebrows (Seriously, didn't he realize there were professionals for that kind of thing?) and replied, "No, but you do look like someone who has my credit card numbers memorized."

"Not the expiration date," House corrected. "Not the security code."

"Expiration is 5/16 and the security code is 049. I admire your shamelessness."

"Yeah, you and everybody else. It's one of my more highly acclaimed attributes." Smirking slightly, he retrieved the take out menu from the kitchen, but when he reached into his jeans for his cell phone his fingers found only lent. Okay, why would Wilson think that was at all funny? Salvatore's Pizza was one of the things he was willing to come to blows over.

"Where's my phone," he yelled to his friend. Wilson once again appeared in his line of vision but he looked inarguably innocent. His face was scrunched up in confusion and there was a believable touch of concern in his brown eyes.

"I . . . didn't have it." Yep, that was definitely concern, and it was filtering into his voice. "Did you leave it in the car?"

No. He'd called the team twice since the movers had left. "Yeah, probably." He was careful to give no outward reaction but his mind was already buzzing with possible explanations. He was sure he had put it in his pocket after the last call, but if that was the case then where the hell was it?

The unease settling in his stomach was becoming harder to ignore. But no, he couldn't think that way. That was years ago.

He searched his bedroom carefully to no avail, then, as he was going to check the living room, the oncologist's voice met his ears. "In here!"

He found his friend in the kitchen, long, thin, Samsung in his hand. "It was on the counter." Was it his imagination or was Wilson inspecting him a little too carefully? Was he, too, remembering a long drive to a large, foreboding hospital?

House cleared his throat and dialed the number, avoiding the other man's gaze.

That night, as he slipped deep under the covers, he reflected over the evening. How had his phone ended up on the counter? He would have seen it when he found the menu. So that left . . . What? Wilson? But the image of his best friend' anxious eyes made him reject the idea immediately. Sure, Wilson had found the phone and he had been able to convincingly lie to the diagnostician on more than one occasion, but he couldn't fake fear.

He shifted in bed and as he did his eyes flipped to the window; what he saw made him freeze. All the windows were shut and locked, but the curtains on the far left . . . billowed out slightly, as though a breeze was making its way through the room.

_Air conditioning,_ he decided silently before noticing that the vent was on the other side. Okay, what the hell?

He fell back against the pillow, unable to tear his gaze away from the suspicious curtains. What had he just seen? It must be a trick of the lighting or . . .

_Or Wilson's right_, a soft voice in his mind whispered.

No. No way, he was better now. The Vicodin was out of his system, there was no reason for the hallucinations to start back up again. He was fine. Fine.

Then what exactly had happened?


	3. Chapter 3

Wilson stared blankly into the cabinet, debating his choices. He had known it was a mistake to let House do the grocery shopping right before they had moved, so now the cereal choices were limited to Fruit Loops and Frosted Flakes. Really? House was a doctor, for crying out loud!

"This stuff will rot your teeth," he informed his best friend when the man entered the room.

Nothing. He glanced over in surprise and frowned when House merely took a seat at the table and dropped his head into his hands.

"House," he ventured. "You okay?"

There was no sarcasm in the bright blue eyes when the older man responded, "Not really."

Only then did he fully take in House's expression and what he saw made him swallow hard. He had seen the look only once before and that had been right before he had to drop him off at a mental institution. _This can't be happening, _he thought in horror. He clawed through the cloud of fear, and somehow his voice didn't shake when he responded. "What's wrong?"

House was quiet for a moment. All the oncologist could hear was his own heartbeat.

"I'm hallucinating again." The words hung in the air and Wilson tried to wrap his mind around the statement.

"No." He hadn't meant to make the word audible but once it was said he didn't regret it. His friend had worked too hard for his world to turn upside down again. There had to be another explanation.

"Wilson," the older man pled. "Don't do this. I don't like it any more than you do, but I can't pretend it didn't happen. Can you drive me?"

"Just wait." He struggled to keep an even tone. "Can you tell me what happened before we just jump right to crazy?"

"I told you. I hallucinated. I saw something not real. Kinda the definition."

"What, exactly?"

"The curtain moved."

Wilson quietly processed this information before he answered. "So you're saying that you're insane because a piece of _cloth_ suspended in the air by a _pole_ moved?"

House glared back angrily. "I'm not overreacting," he growled. "There wasn't a vent nearby, the windows were locked and the door was shut."

"Maybe it's a ghost."

"Right, of course, that makes perfect sense. You get the Ouija Board, I'll find some candles, and we can meet back here at midnight," House retorted.

"Well, there _has_ to be another reason_._"

Both men lapsed into silence, both certain the other was wrong.

"There's really only one way to settle this," Wilson eventually stated.

House looked up and met his eyes. "And what would that be?"

"I take it back," House grumbled two hours later, as he and Wilson carried a half a dozen bags from Best Buy into the house. "I'm not the one that's crazy. You are."

"You're hilarious," Wilson muttered. He deposited his bags onto the kitchen table and pulled out the first two cameras. The guy at the store had shown them how to set them on a timer, then how to hook them up to the T.V. for later viewing. Next bag had another camera and an extra battery. The list went on from there. When he pulled the last item (a large flashlight, with one of the brightest beams he had ever seen) he sighed softly and turned to his friend. "You're not crazy, House."

"Yeah, from the guy with the sudden electronic fetish."

"I personally don't think this is all that funny," Wilson argued. "You're either losing your mind, or we have to learn how to perform an exorcism. And I've never been very good at Latin."

"I can say 'Your shoelace is untied,'" House offered cheerfully.

"I don't think that will be of much assistance, but thanks anyway."

"So what are we supposed to do now?" House asked, taking the seat beside his friend. "Are we waiting on the lights to flicker or something?"

Wilson rolled his eyes. "How about we set up the cameras?" To be honest, that was the last thing in the world he wanted to do. He knew he was putting on a brave face, but inside the flutter of nerves hadn't died down since that morning. Did he really think that he was going to catch acts of a transparent being on video? No. And once the whole thing got started it wouldn't be long before he would be confronted with the truth, no matter how grim it was.

But when it came right down to it, he just wanted to get it over with. He told himself that not knowing was worse than anything else. "Put that one in the living room," he instructed, gesturing to the camera in his friend's hands. "It's bigger, and you know that in all the movies it's the living room and the bedrooms you have to be worried about."

House smothered the annoyed answer that rose to his lips, and reminded himself that the oncologist was just worried. Tomorrow morning they'd pack his bags and head north, and he would once again find himself trying to repair his pathetic existence. He thought of being separated from the only person in his life and was struck by how bleak a picture that painted. Memories of his time at Mayfield assaulted him, too strong to keep at bay.

"Were you going to move," Wilson gently asked, interrupting his thoughts.

House stood and carried the device to the mantel above the fireplace, then plugged it into the wall. The box had said to charge it for at least three hours before use, and who was he to challenge a box?

"So, can you think of anyone that you might have pissed off so badly that they needed to stalk you in the afterlife," Wilson joked. He_ sounded _calm, but House had been around the other man long enough to decipher the tight lines behind the forced smile.

He supposed there wasn't any point in torturing his friend, so he decided to merely return, "The words 'everyone I've ever met' come to mind."

"That should have been my first guess."

**A/N: Sorry it had a sudden ending. Had to do it that way for the next chapter. Reviews fill my life with strawberry muffins.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note**: So, I finally forced myself to watch Both Sides Now, since it came on USA today. I've always avoided it because I knew how it ended, but I decided to suffer through it for the good of Hilson and Confrontation.

"So, seen anything creepy yet," Wilson asked when House stepped into the living room. Hours had passed since the men had set up the cameras and he, personally, had not witnessed anything out of the ordinary. Of course, that didn't necessarily mean that House hadn't.

The diagnostician slowly shook his head, and fell onto the couch. "But it's early yet."

Wilson sighed, and flipped on the television. The pictures on the screen moved in front of the pair, but instead of paying attention to the program, he turned his thoughts inward. How could this whole thing be happening? He'd thought, when he had paid for the house, that this would be a chance for them to start over, and for him to do it right this time. He would show his best friend that even though he had pushed him aside before, he really did care about him. In the back of his mind, he had even thought about laying it _all_ out on the table – that whether either of them liked it or not Wilson was in love with him.

But he couldn't tell him now. House was having a hard enough time as it was.

"Foreman called while you were in the shower," Wilson eventually said, just to fill the silence. "I reminded him that we're on vacation."

The corners of the older man's lips turned up, just a tad. "I'm sure he loved that."

"I'm pretty sure I won't be on his Christmas list. Don't worry though. The patient wasn't even close to dying yet."

"I really wasn't worried."

"Wanna play Scrabble," Wilson asked. It was a little random, sure, but he wasn't wired for just sitting around, waiting on something horrible to happen. He gestured to the box underneath the coffee table.

House laughed, but tilted his head in agreement. As the oncologist passed him the bag of letters he said, "Cuddy e-mailed me this morning."

Wilson's eyes flew to his friend, and his stomach rolled over in revulsion. He felt guilty for the resentment he still had for the woman that had been the owner of House's heart for so long. He found himself, as he always did when her name came up, regretting the recent rift in their friendship. He knew he was to blame, but somewhere along the way he had realized that they just couldn't be friends. Well, that _he_ couldn't be friends with _her_. "What did she say?"

"She said it was just to tell us to enjoy our vacation." House paused to glance quickly at his friend. "But she's probably having doubts about the breakup."

"The breakup," he repeated blankly. "The breakup? Does she realize that it was-"

"Like two hundred years ago? I'm not sure. And I mean, we broke up for a reason." He smirked lightly. "Well, she broke up with me for a reason."

"That's true." He wondered if the other man heard his voice shake. "But you seemed to care about her."

"Yeah."

"What do you want to do?" God, how many times had he wanted to have this conversation with his friend? But House had always made it very clear that questions were _not_ permissible. And now there he was, as if he'd planned it all along. 'Do you still love her?"

"Hard to answer that objectively when we have Samara floating around here," House joked. "Our lives do hang in the balance."

Wilson opened his mouth to respond when the sound of shattering glass met the men's ears. House looked to Wilson immediately, openly searching for validation from his friend. Wilson's eyebrows shot up, and he jumped to his feet. "I'm going to check it out," he whispered.

In his voice's normal volume the diagnostician replied, "I'm pretty sure Samara can hear you. It's not like we can count on her being asleep upstairs."

Wilson held up his left index finger to silence him and crept soundlessly into the dining room. One of the wine glasses he had bought during an impromptu visit to the mountains with House the year before lay in tiny pieces on the hardwood floor. The moonlight streaming into the room gave the scene an eerie glow, and it wasn't until he exhaled sharply that he realized that he had been holding his breath. His eyes darted around the room, but found no one else. The glass had been in the hutch, he was sure.

A shiver shot up his spine, and he was back with House in five long strides. "Did you take a glass out," he asked, already knowing the answer.

House shook his head slowly. "No. I told you I hate those things. As I recall, I begged you not to buy them. They're way too small."

"I'm now one short."

House's eyes unfocused and Wilson knew the other man was taking in the information, processing how ludicrous the whole thing sounded, and being forced to take it seriously anyway. How many explanations were there?

None. And they both knew it.

"At least you're not crazy."

"It's true. There is that."

"However . . ."

"Yes. However."

Wilson pondered the situation for a moment. "And you really don't know _any_ Latin?"

"Believe me. I'm kicking myself for it now." There was a brief silence until House continued. "So, what do we do? Find some downtrodden priest to perform an exorcism on our little shop of horrors? Come on, be serious."

"And what's your solution," Wilson answered. "Let the damn thing run amuck? Well, why didn't you just say that from the beginning? I'll get some blankets and we can set up the couch as a bed for the dear!" He blinked when an unnerving thought occurred to him. "Oh, God. You don't think it's Amber, do you?"

"Seriously, Wilson. Only you could use a haunting as an excuse for narcissism."

"Then who do you think it is? Kutner?"

House glared at him in annoyance. "It's not Kutner. More likely that it's someone neither of us knows. I'd hope that my ex-employee has better things to do in his afterlife than bug me _years _after his death."

"So what did we decide," Wilson prompted. "Yes to the downtrodden priest?"

"I suppose. Yes to the downtrodden priest."

**Author's Note: **I know it may seem a little weird that House just accepted the idea of ghosts so easily, but the way I figure it is that House is special because he's always right. And, for the purposes of this story ghosts exist. Thus, House has to believe in them once he's proven to be wrong.


End file.
